Innovations to Drive Future Drug Discovery

Conference Directors: Darren Cawkill (Apollo Therapeutics) & Jon Hutchinson (GlaxoSmithKline)

Plenary Keynote Speakers: Professor Steve Jackson (University of Cambridge) & Harren Jhoti (Astex Pharmaceuticals)

New biology continues to emerge at a fast pace and is revealing many new and exciting therapeutic opportunities for drug discovery scientists; potential novel drug targets and new mechanisms-of-action. It is critical that the drug discovery field continually adapts and equips with new technologies and innovations that will enable targets to be prosecuted no matter which direction the cutting-edge biology has taken. Hence the 2019 ELRIG R&I conference will discuss how the most promising new biology is being identified and discovered and seek to explore what promising new technologies and innovations are emerging to enable this science to be effectively translated into successful therapeutics.

The four scientific sessions will therefore address different aspects of translating new biology into drug discovery projects

1. New Technologies & Innovations in Drug Discovery and Development

Session Chairs: Andrew Leach (European Bioinformatics Institute) & Pamela Williams (Astex Pharmaceuticals)

In the future, refinement and development of experimental technologies, combined with the power of algorithmic computing, are expected to result in more comprehensive integration of data from multiple sources. This session will explore the potential of these developments in rational drug design to increase the future pace and success of early discovery.

2. Where are new drug target hypotheses coming from?

Session Chairs: Euan Stronach (GlaxoSmithKline) & Nadine Clemo (Apollo Therapeutics)

This session will look at how human data, new technologies and new approaches to academia-industry collaboration are combining to build a pipeline of new targets for drug discovery.

3. Therapeutic approaches of the future

Session Chairs: Mark Edbrooke (Independent Scientific Consultant)  & Alessio Ciulli (University of Dundee)

The discovery community is actively looking beyond conventional drug modalities to unlock novel biology and address previously intractable mechanisms of disease. This session will survey progress in developing alternative modalities as the therapeutic approaches of the future.

4. Next generation in vitro models for drug efficacy & safety

Session Chairs: Lorna Ewart (AstraZeneca) & Alex Alderton (Sanger Institute)

Developments such as iPS-derived cells, 3D cell culture and gene editing are now routinely impacting at an early stage of many drug discovery projects. How are these developments also driving more predictive toxicology models? What technologies/innovations will drive the next generation disease models in pre-clinical drug discovery?